


Blue Moon

by AdmiralGodunov



Category: RWBY
Genre: Gen, Weiss has no idea what she is doing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-05
Updated: 2014-08-05
Packaged: 2018-02-11 23:26:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2087094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AdmiralGodunov/pseuds/AdmiralGodunov
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the only thing standing between an injured Ruby and a pack of hungry Beowolves is Weiss Schnee holding Crescent Rose.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blue Moon

_Hands up, elbows tucked - protect the ribcage and the jaw!_

_Breathe in, breathe out._

_Feet shoulder-width apart, keep one hand in, pivot from the waist..._

"You're not... seriously... going to try to... fight them... with your... bare hands... are you... Weiss?"

Weiss Schnee's jaw clenched as she stared down the group of Beowolves - and one Ursa - that had surrounded the two of them, and her hands went white at the knuckles.

"What else do you propose I do?" she snapped back at her partner, ignoring the pained, labored breathing from behind her, the way it drew in, gasped, then stopped short, and then exhaled quickly. Ruby had a rib injury, and a significant enough one she couldn't stand. It ground all over every one of Weiss' gears. "It was your showboating that got us in this position in the first place!"

Weiss glanced around. Though the group of Grimm circled, there wasn't much chance they would be able to get a jump on her from behind so easily - the tree she had backed up into with Ruby at her back was thickly branched, an evergreen of some sort whose branches reached the ground. It would slow the Grimm down, at least.

"Your Aura's... low... too," Ruby countered, barely able to talk for the little breath she could draw in, and Weiss bit down against the urge to snap to stop talking at her partner. She could not afford a temper explosion at the moment, however, no matter how much it seethed and bubbled under the surface.

The whole situation was infuriating. Ruby was injured, Myrtenaster was rammed to the hilt in the one Ursa of the group's flank - and it had disappeared as soon as she had turned her back to throw a dust canister into a small grouping of the Beowolves. She could see the Ursa, in the distance, pacing hungrily behind the circle of wolves, limping with its own injury as though taunting her with her own weapon.

Weiss had budgeted her Aura better, so she had more of it than Ruby, just a bit of leftover Dust, and her Semblance. Between those things, she thought, perhaps, she could make at least a clearing to grab Ruby and run. It would probably complicate whatever rib injury the other girl had but getting out alive was better than not getting out at all.

"Weiss..."

"What, Ruby," the heiress ground out through her tightly clamped jaw, eyes roaming, peering, waiting for the first Beowolf to make its move so she could devise a good route to get out. If she was lucky, it would be a big opening, but with their numbers, she didn't bet on it. There must've been half the forest's Beowolf population in the one place. She'd never seen them in such numbers before!

"Pick... _her..._ up..." Ruby said, and Weiss was momentarily distracted.

"Who?"

It was an opening that a particularly enthusiastic Beowolf took as an opening and lunged at Weiss. The white-haired young woman hopped into a neat backflip and let the thing go careening off into the other side of the deadly circle, knocking out one or two of its fellows. Weiss stepped forward, but the crowd pushed in. No such opening yet, but the Beowolves took the one's cue to begin converging.

"Crescent... Rose...! Use her!"

Even potentially dangerously injured, Ruby had clung to her weapon. Weiss wished she had the same single-minded determination with her own weapon, but her grip hadn't been entirely sure when she'd seen Ruby go flying, and realized that the other girl's Aura had been drained.

Weiss'd almost forgotten Myrtenaster in her desperate flight to take her place by her partner's side, in fact. Only when she had turned and realized she'd made the grievous error of allowing their enemies to corner them that she also realized she had been left with only one weapon between the two of them, and the wielder too injured to so much as stand.

Without much choice, without much room as another Beowolf leapt in for the kill, Weiss moved. So ready to fight with her fists, she was surprised at her own body as she seized the shaft of the great red scythe.

"I have no idea what I'm doing!" Weiss cried, but wrenched the scythe's tip out of the ground and swung it with all her might, not entirely unlike a bat or a pole swung by a grade schooler; untrained, unaimed, and completely amateurish.

She felt her jaw hang open with how easily the scythe sailed and arced through the air, how effortlessly the top-end-heavy weapon cleaved through the Beowolf, and just how much force it slammed tip-down into the ground, leaving her stumbling in the follow-through and clinging to the haft lest she end up on the ground herself.

"Yeah! Like... like that! The... the mechanism... for transformation... should be by your... left hand! Pull... the latch... and... make sure it... locks back."

Weiss hit it and wasn't surprised when the whole thing suddenly tucked and folded up in her hands, putting itself into its gun-only mode. This was a little easier to use than the actual scythe would be, Weiss realized.

She also realized she needed to focus more when the recoil of the first shot nearly sent her sprawling for the second time on her own butt. Luckily, the high-powered bullet was just as effective as it needed to be and the closest Beowolf's neck exploded and it described a neat backwards circle in the air as it went sailing into its fellows, interrupting a sneak attack from behind.

Okay, this... this Weiss could do. She backed herself closer to the tree, pulling the bolt handle and letting the shell dislodge before chambering another one, then repeated the process five, six, seven times in a row, clearing the Beowolves one - sometimes two, if the shot lined up right - at a time as they charged.

Ten...

And the gun clicked empty, the bolt no longer moving rounds as the last landed, smoking on the muddy ground.

Weiss nearly swore aloud, and heard her partner whimper pathetically as she tried to turn and find more rounds to load off the extra ammo at her belt.

Desperate in the interim, Weiss triggered the mechanism again, and was just about dumped unceremoniously on her face as the scythe suddenly unfolded, and her grip on the shaft was too far back to counteract the weight. It was a lucky sudden lunge as a claw _wooshed_ through the air just above her head, the sound of the Beowolf's motion making the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. Weiss shifted her grip, trying to dig the tip of the scythe back into the mud so she could use it as a grip as she shifted suddenly, lashing out with her heel and smashing it into the Beowolf's chin. The kick picked the Grimm up, sent it flying out a few paces, despite that Weiss wasn't able to put as much power behind it as she wanted.

"The... the bullets... it's a bottom-mounted..." Ruby whimpered again, and Weiss let a somewhat unladylike growl that she would have regretted normally, but between all the bumbling with Crescent Rose and the dire situation, she didn't have the time to worry about the details. "There's the latch to release that... you can use to get rid... of the clip..."

"No time!" Weiss yelped suddenly, as another Beowolf bounded toward them, bouncing off the branches of the tree and coming down. Weiss summoned a glyph, and used it to propel herself upward. It took a fair bit of effort for her to twist in midair, but as soon as she had a good spin in, the Beowolf was suddenly in three or four pieces, raining down upon the battlefield.

With Weiss in the air, however, the remaining wolves on the ground split their attention between her and the prone Ruby.

She couldn't let that happen. She could never let that happen. Growling again, she turned and launched off a glyph toward the ground, using another glyph to off-center her gravity so she could use the momentum of the fall to transfer into the scythe.

Suddenly, Weiss Schnee and Crescent Rose were almost a literal whirlwind of metal and death to the Beowolves. It was far easier to use her momentum and the weight distribution of the scythe this way, gripping it by the end as tightly as she could, but not so tightly she couldn't keep twirling, and just directed the sharp end of the scythe pointed at the Grimm.

They fell by the numbers, and Weiss kept her gaze firm and focused on one point in the distance, trying to remember what they had taught her in dance class about ballerinas and their ability to pirouette without making themselves dizzy or sick, but maintaining as much focus on the surrounding Grimm as she could.

It was sloppy, but it was surprisingly effective. For a moment, Weiss allowed herself a little smile as the numbers around them thinned.

"Cool!" Weiss heard Ruby attempt to yell over the din of battle around her. She sounded surprisingly chipper about Weiss' performance, despite being dangerously close to the whirling steel that could easily spell death. "You... it's... not very good! But it's working!"

"Shut up, Ruby!" Weiss snapped, scowling at her point of focus, then sending a searing glare to the black creatures around them.

Then the scythe hit resistance that it hadn't before, and rebounded right out of Weiss' hands. Panting, the Schnee heiress fell back, watching the scythe skid off toward a group of Beowolves who immediately made to cover it.

There had definitely been a dent made in the numbers, but there were still so many of them.

"Well... you... tried. We're at least... less doomed... now?"

"No, and shut up!" Weiss cried again, backing swiftly toward Ruby. The Grimm had attempted to close in behind her, but one more container of Dust thrown at them, and they cleared quickly.

She really needed to stop using those things, Weiss realized, if they wanted to have a chance to clear a path and get out. The Beowolves began to converge again.

Ruby coughed and groaned pathetically, slumping over to the side. "Aura's... not healing... very well... this sucks."

"It's because you're still tired..." Weiss said, and looked around again. Alright, far fewer Beowolves now, there would be a chance to distract them until she could grab her partner and leave. She reached down and set a couple fingers on a Dust canister, one of the few she had left, and readied it to throw.

She never got the chance, and it was a lucky break, indeed.

"Oh hey! There they are! Oh Weiss and Ru-by~!"

Weiss never thought she would be so glad to hear that all too annoying sing-song voice and see the pink explosion of Dust from a grenade before.

The Beowolves barely had time to turn toward the new sound before the crushing slam of a hammer piled three of them together and sent them flying, followed by a small, ginger haired girl with a manic grin.

"I _thought_ I saw Mirror... Marten... Mew-mew in that Ursa's leg! I was right~!" Nora called, and immediately set back to pounding and crushing the Beowolves to their side, after a moment, she hooked her toe under the downed Crescent Rose, and kicked it up into her off-hand, before throwing it like a skipping stone across the ground toward Ruby and Weiss. Ruby immediately complained _don't do that!_ but by then, the scythe was halfway back to Weiss.

"It's called Myrtenaster!"

The distraction over, some Grimm broke off to pursue Nora, but the rest of the pack converged on the rather helpless lot near the tree.

Weiss, hurriedly, scooped Crescent Rose back up and spun in a sideways, over-the-shoulder blow more like she had a sledge hammer than a scythe, and ended up cleaving two Beowolves and about eight inches of ground with the blade.

The scythe, however, had decided it didn't want to stop moving, so Weiss found herself pirouetting, carried by its weight, and decided to roll with it. Something told her, with her lack of experience, it was probably better to go with what the scythe wanted to do than try to fight or control it.

"You're gonna... dull her... blade-!" Ruby started to protest, but was cut off.

"Incoming!"

Weiss barely had the chance to register Pyrrha's voice before something went flying through the air right near her hip, something she didn't get the chance to see as Crescent Rose's weight carried her around to face her back to it, but she did hear something _smack_ into the tree behind her, and Ruby call "Hey!" Followed by a very notable "Sorry!" from Pyrrha.

Weiss didn't get the chance to check what it was before she had to cleave another Beowolf straight up into the air, but was beseiged on her side from two more of the beasts.

"Weiss! Left!"

Weiss didn't stop to think, she only reacted, letting one of her glyphs propel her into a side-flipping leap. An explosion of ice crystals spread right through the Grimm, freezing them with a yelp mid-leap.

Weiss turned around, slowly, and found Ruby, clutching Myrtenaster's hilt with both hands as she leaned heavily on it like a cane, the tip of the sword buried in the mud and clearly the source of the ice all the way up to the Beowolves.

Ruby grinned, part pain, part sheepish, part proud at Weiss.

Weiss sighed, and found herself smiling back.

"Trade?" Ruby asked, a little weakly.

Weiss couldn't have nodded faster, and returned the dozen or so paces, dragging the scythe behind her. Ruby protested; Weiss ignored her.

Once she had Myrtenaster in her hands, Weiss turned back toward what was left of the Beowolves - now being cleared out with _remarkable_ speed that Nora and Pyrrha were there, followed shortly behind by Lie Ren and Jaune - and held her ground in front of Ruby, cutting down any Grimm that came close with ease and _fury_. Her arms ached, her sides heaved, the sheer effort of using the weapon had drained what Aura and energy she had left. But they had survived. Yang and Blake would arrive eventually, and everything would be fine.

With the tension leaving the atmosphere, Weiss heard Ruby grunt and move.

"You looked... kinda silly... with her... Weiss."

"I know, shut up."

"But you know what?"

"I know you should be _quiet_ and stop aggravating your injury _._ And stop aggravating _me_."

"It was... _awesome_."

"It was _difficult,_ that is the most unwieldy weapon you could have possibly created! What madness possessed you to make something _that_ unbalanced?"

" _You_ were... awesome."

"..."

Weiss Schnee, heir to the great Schnee Dust company, turned back toward their enemies, standing firmly in her defensive point position. She couldn't let Ruby see the little half-smile, after all. "But I'm still not perfect. Now be quiet, Ruby."

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sure everyone has their own ideas for 'weapon swaps', so here was my take on one.
> 
> I just sort of fell in love with the mental image of Weiss hefting Crescent Rose, hitting a nice swinging arc... and then realizing she's not strong enough or trained enough to stop the thing. Crescent Rose cannot be light on the scythe end.
> 
> Also I apologize in advance for this not being well-edited. It was just a silly little thing I thought I'd share.


End file.
